How badly is Romney losing?

Until the end of the conventions, it was not uncommon to see a media article about how close the presidential race was at the time. If anything, the articles were based on national head-to-head polls, and generally showed Obama a point or two ahead of Romney.

Since the conventions, Obama has been gaining ground in the national polls. In fact, the last such poll that wasn’t Rasmussen that showed Romney with a lead was this Gallup Tracking poll from late August.

If you’ve followed my, or almost anyone else’s, analyses of state head-to-head polls it is no secret that Romney is in deep trouble. No matter what the national polls say, it is the electoral college (and, in a tie, the House…and, you know, sometimes the Supreme Court) that elects the President. The simulated electoral college contest has Romney losing consistently and badly this entire election season.

The reason appears to be that Obama is polling stronger in swing states. Credit for this has been attributed to a better-than-average economy in particular swing states, and to the Obama campaign’s early advertising blitz that started defining Romney even before he was the party’s nominee (and with a little help from Romney’s Republican opponents).

The other explanation, which is more of an amusement than a real explanation, is that the polls are all skewed! It’s attributed to the polling this year being “the worst it’s ever been” by political pundit and lower phalange fetishist Dick Morris.

Alternatively, it is a vast left wing media conspiracy!!!1!1! Politico has a nice write-up about Teh Great Polling Conspiracy of 2012. I think Josh Marshall summarized it best:

…having been through several of these cycles, if you’re theory is based on systemic error on the part of basically all pollsters, you’re in for a long election night.

So the following information can be read in two ways. If you think the polls, when taken en masse come out about right, on average, then I will present to you a measure of just how badly Romney is losing. If you are a Poll Truther, the following information provides solid evidence of just how skewed the polls are (if you presume Romney is really leading).

Here’s what I did. I took the results of last night’s analyses (umm…after the correction). And I reran the analysis, adding a bias in Romney’s favor to each poll included in the analysis. The bias (or skew) was a fixed percentage. I began an 0% and stepped up by 1% at a time through 10%. Here is a summary of the results for Obama’s median electoral votes with 95% confidence intervals:

The graph is clear…to eke out a win, Romney has to move the electorate across the board by a remarkable 6%. That is, he is 6% behind in the polling now. That is a larger margin than the 3.5% margin in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls. That’s because the math of the electoral college places more importance on certain states—and Romney need to do more to win those states.

To win with at least a 95% probability, Romney needs to shift things by 8%. To have the kind of lead that Obama now enjoys—with a solid 100% probability of winning—Romney needs a 10% shift.

Of course, this model is a bit simplified—I skew every poll for all states. It isn’t all states that have to be moved; rather it’s just a handful of “important states” that need moving. I mean, skewing Utah and Mississippi doesn’t really accomplish anything for Romney, and Massachusetts and D.C. aren’t going to be swung over no way, no how.

Here is the electoral map of a Romney victory scenario—presuming he moves voters in his favor by 6%:

Ohio and Pennsylvania plain gone—the polling now suggests they are out of reach for Romney even in this most extreme scenario where he shifts everything by 6%. Instead, a “Romeny + 6%” victory includes Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. Oh…and Nebraska-2, which is tied when we remove the skew.

I’m not suggesting the election is over. But it looks like Romney has an almost insurmountable task ahead of him if he is to leave the rolls of the unemployed.

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Romney can only win if he blows Obama out of the water at the first debate just to get people to listen to him, then Paul Ryan needs to win decisively at the VP debate (though not as strongly as Romney at the first debate), then Romney has to win, though not necessarily decisively both debates after that. He probably could settle for a tie in one of the last two debates, but only if the first presidential and the first and only VP go as I just stated. So in other words, Romney has to win Super Super Super big at the first debate, Ryan has to win the VP debate fairly big, and then Romney needs to hold on at the last two debates, and win one, and at worse tie the other.

Romney has never had a chance to win. The only unknown has always been whether Obama gets 320, 340, or 360+ electoral votes. The electoral map has never permitted a Romney win without some cataclysm happening.

So, what happens to the GOP after this election? Assuming Ryanomney lose, and it surely looks like they will by a fairly decisive margin, won’t the Rs be pulling out the knives to carve each other up? If the Rs turn further toward the right, further toward fantasy, further toward self-delusion, we will no longer have a viable opposition party. Even I don’t think that’s a good thing in a democracy.

If you are right, expect the Wingdings to consider polling a propaganda tool. They’ll come up with their OWN special polls and polling methods.

You know, just like they did when they imagined that Wikipedia was a liberal propaganda tool, and so they developed “Conservapedia.” I think we can all agree that Conservapedia has been a force to be reckoned with…as far as comedy goes.

Think PollingGPS™!

So you can imagine for the 2014 midterms or the 2016 presidential election, amateur propagandists (Hi Bob! Hi Mr. Cynical!) flooding blog comment threads demanding that people pay attention to the PollingGPS™ polls, and wondering why the MSM is totally ignoring the PollingGPS™ polls.

The young-ish libertarianish folks are already gone. The way Ron Paul was treated at the convention was the last straw for them. It looks like they’re going to go libertarian after the election. Gary Johnson’s on the ballot in 47 states and the the libertarian’s have 154 electeds around the country. I’m thinking that’s going to grow. They’ll still be a small fringe, but they’ll be a larger small fringe.

Okay Darryl — how about using your model to run a nationwide popular vote prediction?

Start out by taking the popular vote totals for each state in 2008.

Adjust them for expected votes in 2008 by taking the latest U.S. Census population projections for whichever month is most recently available, compared with those for exactly four years earlier, and using that ratio to predict changes in vote totals for 2012. Or perhaps simply skip this step, and assume the difference between 2008 and 2012 won’t skew the results too much in relative terms between the states.

Then use the percentage of popular vote your model produces in each state to predict the popular vote in each state, etc. For states without any polls at all, simply use the 2008 Obama-McCain percentages, and apply those.

Somehow, since you have to change the Romney-Obama gap by six percent using current polling, I would expect your model would also show Obama beating Romney by about six percentage in the nationwide popular vote.

By contrast, nationwide polling averages, such as RealClearPolitics.Com, currently show Obama beating Romney by “only” about 3.5 percent nationwide.

I just don’t think the explanation is due to Romney’s support being too concentrated in his own strongholds. Sure, you have a few states — like Utah, Oklahoma, and Wyoming — that will go for Romney by 2-to-1 over Obama. But then you have large population Obama strongholds such as New York and California that are polling over 60% for Obama.

But I would be curious if you could come up with a nationwide popular vote prediction using your model?

Well, baring HUGE change due to the debates (an unlikely scenario), I expect the following:

(a) Targeted House and Senate races will be flooded with Republican PAC money.

(b) Republicans will continue their obstructionist strategy, hoping that the self-made budget crisis which will hit right after the election will put the economy into a tailspin, for which they will blame President Obama.

(c) Their new target will be control of both the House and the Senate (with 60+ vote majority) in the 2012 elections.

The average American worker/taxpayer will be their pawns in this play for partison/financial advantage.

You’ve got to wonder – how does a party expect to survive if it really ticks off half of it’s prospective voters right out of the gate? That’s what the Republicans have done in their attack on women. Even in the “base” voter blocks which they presumed were safe (i.e., white suburban/rural voters age 50+), a little more than half of those voters are women.

It doesn’t matter how many ethnic or social-economic classes they seek to expand their base, if half of them are women, they are in deep trouble.

The only depressing evidence here is that there still seems to be an unreasoning support for Republicans as evidenced by the relatively close popular vote in the R&R race, and the Congressional/Senate battles.

It seems that everytime you think the Republican ideology has been torn to shreds, it emerges again, in a slightly different personna – like a snake shedding it’s old skin. Of course, when it does so it may look newer and shiney, but a snake is still a snake.

A friend from New Hampshire, a Republican activist, called me today to let me know he’s throwing in the towel. Said the gender gap in NH he’s seen in internal polling has exploded and there’s definitely no return this cycle.

Here’s something from the website of Jack Wu, member of Westboro Baptist Church, running for Kansas School Board.

I would ask anyone if they could point out how it differs in any way from the nasty ignorant frothing of our own Puddl.

Check it out:

My mission, in running for the Kansas State Board of Education, is to throw out the crap that teachers are feeding their students and replace it with healthy good for the soul knowledge from the holy scriptures.

Let’s be specific. Evolution should never be taught in public schools as science. Evolution is false science! God made the heaven and the earth and created humans from the dust of the earth! The very bad teachers that teach that men descended from apes via evolution need to have their teaching licenses revoked. Yes, students should be taught that God created everything.

Alan West (R-FL) is now NINE points behind his challenger. And that was BEFORE a letter he sent to his wife was posted on line.

In the letter, West, who was serving in Iraq at the time, told his wife of four years how she expected her to perform for him when he returned. He demanded specific sex acts from his wife, demanded that she only wear two-piece swim suits, and asked if she was “commited to being his porn star”.

Upon his election to Congress, he insisted he would not talk to women who were Congressmen that wouldn’t agree with him because they were not “ladylike”, had citizens in his district arrested at his town meetings if he didn’t like their questions, and led a charge to defund Planned Parenthood.

“You need the facts about Allen West in 2003,” the announcer says, in response to how West’s ad touted his own military service in that year. “West was criminally charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice; found guilty of three counts of aggravated assault; and relieved of his command. The final Army report: West ‘performed illegal acts…merited court martial…faced 11 years in prison.’ Allen West: He just isn’t who he says he is.”

Of course, this is just the sort of thing that endears you to Teahaddists…

The incident did, however, help West gain notoriety with conservative activists, and to launch a political career that ultimately saw him elected to Congress in the 2010 Republican landslide.

Of course, if you read the article, you will see that the basis of their complaint hasn’t been assertive enough to capture the initiative and make the campaign about Obama’s recrod and the superiority of Republican ideology. They don’t admit that he is a product of a primary process which gave the Republican’s own extremist creation, the Tea Party, extraordinary influence in the party nomination process; that the issues and policies of the current-day Republican party are far too right-wing to be accepted by the American people; that their candidate is himself flawed, in that he doesn’t understand the problems of ordinary people and arrogantly refuses to discuss the details of his policies or even release more than two years worth of tax returns.

Speaking of tapes, Bob, Paul Ryan sez, “Seventy percent of Americans want the American dream. They believe in the American idea. Only 30 percent want their welfare state,” Ryan said. “Before too long, we could become a society where the net majority of Americans are takers, not makers.”

Makers and takers. Way to divide the country there, Galt. You know the saying, “a nation divided…”

You dumbfucks need to get your messaging right, Bob. Do you hate 47% of the country or is it 30%? America wants to know, Bob. Which is it?

Whenever I find myself watching local TV, I’ve noticed more Obama ads than Romney ads, in many stretches by a two-to-one margin. That’s just my observation over fairly limited time periods during the day mind you, so I can’t really say that such a margin exists overall. But what I’ve seen is pretty damning, and suggests that the GOP is beginning to lose faith in Romney carrying Nevada.

I think that there’s a lot more interest, both locally and nationally, in the race for Dean Heller’s Senate seat, to which he was appointed after Jon Ensign’s retirement/escape. The race between Heller and Shelley Berkley has been hot, tight and nasty – both have lobbed fairly effective corruption charges at each other, and I find myself not really liking either candidate, and glad I don’t live in Nevada any more. All the polls I’ve read show very small leads for Heller (the RCP average was Heller by 1.6%) with Berkley dominating Clark County and Heller winning the rest of the state. If money is being pulled away from Romney in Nevada, it’s going here, because ads for both sides are damn near non-stop.

And since some earnest searching hasn’t revealed a damn thing, I’m going to have to assume that Mark Amodei, who easily won the by-election to replace Heller in NV-2 last year, is likely to be re-elected, and I couldn’t even really tell you if anyone is running against him. And after reading his Wikipedia profile and his history in the Nevada state legislature, I can see why – his record in the Assembly and Senate reveals him to be a fairly moderate Republican, which goes over very well here.

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